Art 412 Conceptual/ Information Arts - Intro to Art & Technology
Assignment 3: Sound - Family Portrait - Text - Abstraction
1. Overview
Create a "portrait" of your family using sound.
Find
an interesting way of mapping sound to persons and/or situations. For
example,
you could pick a mapping that represents a each personís generic
characteristics
or you could pick a particular kind of situation and then map your
family
membersí reactions to that situation.
You are asked to focus on text as a visual
component
. Use the characteristics of text to map to members of your family
while
experimenting with qualities such as size, motion, font,
and
style.
Create an event in which sounds and image animation are related in
some
identifiable way - eg in synchronization or counterpoint. The
event
does not have to be highly interactive but it should allow viewers to
start
and stop particular sounds.
2. Sound
Some analysts believe sound is a neglected element in contempoary
western
art; we are a culture dominated by visuality "if you see
what
I mean". Also sound work is constrained by the historical
conventions
of music. Digital sound technologies allow easy recording,
manipulation,
and dissemination of sound and have spurred much sound art
exploration.
Researchers are interested in sonification - the use of sound to
represent
informaiton.
Read the articles
Stephen Wilson - Excerpts
from Information Arts focused on sound (5.2)
(http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/papers/wilson.sound.infoarts.html)
Pick at least one other article from the artlinks
text links (section on sound.)
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/links/wilson.artlinks.texts.html
(See main 412 page for sound resources)
3. Abstraction - Text
Abstraction is a key feature of current art and science. Symbols
are invoke to stand for complex elements of information.
Abstractions
try to avoid direct visual representation and open of a rich world of
imagination
that can map image to idea/object. Links to sites that explore
text.
Every feature of text can become something to be manipulated, something
that carries symbolic meaning, something that takes on expressive power
in relation to the other text. Not everything needs to be
absolutely readable. Be careful with concrete mapping - for
example, "father" for father. Consider synonyms, character
qualities, personal references, favorite objects, typical emotions,
work, whatever can help stand for the person. Treat the text as a
graphic image. For example, consider the following: size,
color, grey scale, transparency, rotation, clarity, font, movement,
layering, The links with sound can bring in new meaning -
for example the sounds mimicing the words, standing against them,
foreshadowing changes in text, looping, using effects that amplify
things going on with the graphic text.
4. Design Constraints - Technical Requirements
- - Digitize sound using Audacity or equivalent program
- - Import sound into sound cast using link to external file
- - Use lingo to control the sound using these and other commands -
sound
play, soundbusy(), sound stop
- - At least one section should have a continually playing
background
sound
that automatically replays when it is done - using the if...then and
soundbusy
structures
- - At least one section should have more than one sound playing at
a time
- - At least one section should have a feature in which user action
stops
one sound and starts another.
- - At least one section should have a coordination of sound and
visual
action
on the screen.
Information about CIA
Program